Environmental lighting is a paramount concern for people. With lighting, individuals can “extend” the day so they can be more productive. They can enhance certain moods of being for themselves and others. They can see in places normally darkened. Lighting has become a necessity in modem society. To this end, mankind had developed new and more efficient ways of creating environmental lighting since the discovery of fire. Perhaps the most innovative improvement at the time was Edison's incandescent lamp, which has formed the basis for lighting for the past century.
Improvements in lighting have utilized new technologies. Fluorescent lighting has recently become more affordable and more convenient, adapting the technology to work with the standard “Edison” light sockets to power new compact fluorescent devices. However, fluorescent devices contain mercury, which is released into the immediately surrounding environment when a fluorescent bulb is broken and can be an immediate and direct health and environmental hazard. They also use more energy than LED's.
LED's have not, until now, been extensively used due to their relatively low (compared to incandescent, fluorescent and halogen bulbs) light output and lack of white light. Likewise, while they generate less heat than a conventional incandescent bulb, LED's are extremely sensitive to heat, even the lower levels they themselves generate—which affects their performance. Currently, high-flux LED's have been introduced to the market, such as the DYNASTY high-flux LED produced by CAO Group, Inc., and offer more promise in the environmental lighting market than conventional LEDs.
The present invention is a base that is capable of being inserted in a standard Edison socket, upon which is mounted at least one high-flux LED. The base contains control circuitry in order to operate the LEDs and acts as a dissipative heat sink. The high-flux LEDs are removable in case of eventual burn-out or a simple desire of the user to change colors of the light. The present invention represents a departure from the prior art in that the environmental lighting of the present invention allows for the efficient use of LED's in a cost and energy efficient lighting design.